TALK IT OVER
Lockdown block
Jane Wenham Jones offers advice for a writer who had wanted some time to finish her novel – but hadn’t bargained for enforced isolation
If you had told me a year ago, I would be able to spend months on end at home – either not working at all, or being able to do it from my dining room table, with no travelling and all my social engagements cancelled, I would have punched the air.
It would have felt like a gift because I have been writing the same novel for nearly three years and I am desperate to finish it. I have constantly complained that I just need a clear run at the manuscript but now I have been given one, it hasn’t worked out like that. I’d completed about 30,000 words by March 2020 and it is only 35,000 words now. Even though I have planned out the remaining chapters I seem unable to
progress any further. I have never believed in writers’ block – taking the widely-held view that you just have to get on with it – but now I cannot raise the mental energy to write any more. I sit and stare at the screen but I have grown to hate what I have written already and lost all confidence in the story I was once so proud of. It is hard to write dialogue when you barely talk to anyone. I know this is challenging for everyone but if I have to miss out on seeing my adult children and grandchildren, I want to feel something worthwhile has come out of this difficult period and have something to show for lockdown. I feel so furious with myself.